This blog highlights how applications built around DWF can do more than what can be done just using paper. The blog covers the building (architectural/electrical/construction), manufacturing, and infrastructure (e.g., GIS, telecommunications) industries.

April 30, 2008

Want to become the office hero? Unless you are looking at weeks until retirement, we are all looking to make a difference, and please our managers, right? We all know the golden rule for office heroics: make money or save money! I am always hearing about the time and cost savings that our customers have incurred with implementing DWF and Autodesk Design Review into their current design processes. The best part is, it’s a free solution, so when you are writing up the “justification for software”, it should be easy.

Below is a quick look at how you can save time and money using the new find and locate feature in Design Review 2009, by implementing DWF and Design Review, instead of paper, into your workflow. If you already use Design Review in your workflow, this should speed things up even further, as it is a quicker way to get to the information (including BIM data) that your team needs.

This quick tutorial (just over 2 minutes) will walk you through finding and locating objects, properties, text, etc. within a DWF file repository. And maybe, just maybe, you will become the office hero.

Using the Find feature (from the main toolbar, or select Edit>Find), enter a text string.

Click the Advanced Find button to display the Advanced Find features, including selecting the type of content being searched: All, Current Model or Sheet, Current Table, Markups, Models, Sheets, Tables. Note: You can quickly locate text in an open DWF file by searching for tabular data, markups, text on 2D sheets, objects, sheet names, and their properties. Found results are shown in a convenient list, enabling you to click a result to display the found text or associated object on the canvas or in a palette.

Many results should show up for “door.” Click any resulting hyperlink to display the associated result instance in the canvas window.

The result is highlighted in both the Object Properties and Model panels.

Note: Any text item which was imported into your DWF file using the DWF Writer can also be located with the find feature. This includes Microsoft Office products, as well as PDF files and others.

April 14, 2008

Autodesk Design Review 2009 has received a very positive review by Cadalyst and has been rated as "Highly Recommended" in the process.

It outlines, amongst other things, that this newest release will be included with all major Autodesk software releases. Other subjects include DWFx, the enhanced user interface and the rotate sheet feature.

April 09, 2008

Ever find yourself up late at night trying to assemble a toy or gift? Did you think that the instructions should have been easier to explain? Maybe whoever wrote them was just a warm body and not the engineer? Often instructions are an afterthought, since most are made up of text and 2D sketched drawings that are difficult to understand. Assemby instructions in a 3D environment are more intuitive because we live in a 3D world.

There is an easy to use tool in Autodesk Inventor for building assembly instructions. It was designed for DWF, which can be displayed in Design Review. The purpose of this tool is to give shop floor technicians or customers clear directions on how to assemble a part.

This tutorial will show you how to reduce mistakes and headaches for assembliers. If only I could convince toy companies to use this tool, I would not be up so late on Christmas Eve.

In Inventor, select the New button, then Presentation (also, File > New > Standard.ipn)

Select Create View…, which opens the Select Assembly dialog. Open an assembly (.iam) file (should be default if assembly file is open). Your assembly will display in the main display window.

Select a part in the assembly (multi-select by using Shift-selecting)

Move the camera to a good location for the animation. This can be changed per sequence of the animation.

Choose Tweak Components… from the Presentation Panel, which opens the Tweak components dialog.

Select an axis for the animation (usually on the part you selected)

Selet the transformation (rotate or transform), and the axis for transforms, then…

Adjust the part to its new location…that’s it, you have your first animated part.

Repeat steps 6 through 9 for each part(s) inverse to the final animation (first is last) sequence.

Adjust Animation

Once you have all parts disassembled, you will need to tweak the sequence. You can also combine sequences, if necessary. For example, if you want to parts moving at the same time (i.e. screw rotation and movement).

To play the assembly animation, select Animate… from the Presentation Panel.

On the model Panel, change the filter to “Sequence View”. This is where you can move and combine sequences order by dragging and dropping the sequences. Note that when you mouseover a sequence it will outline the part in the display window.

Repeat steps 2 & 3 until the animation is in the correct order. Adding steps may be necessary.

Add Assembly Instructions and Set Camera locations

Once the animation order is set, you will probably need to set up your cameras for each sequence, and add assembly instructions. To do this, simply right-mouse-click on any sequence, and select Edit…, which will open the Edit Task & Sequences dialog.

In the description under Sequences, add in the instructions for the given sequence.

Adjust the camera, and click on the Set Camera button to reset the camera.

Run through steps 14-15 until animation is complete.

Once completed, save the presentation file, then Publish DWF…

Under the Publish Presentation Dialog, be sure to select the Presentations tab, and invoke animations and instructions “on” before publishing.

Open DWF in Design Review

Once complete, open the DWF file in Design Review. The animation controls in Design Review are simple.

This great article was submitted by Cliff Medling. He is our Technical Marketing Manager in the Platform Technology Products group and focused on collaboration tools such as Autodesk Design Review and Freewheel. Cliff has over 12 years of experience in the software industry, including roles as product designer, applications engineer, and visualization engineer.

We are all ears if you have any ideas for tutorials which you would like to see on this blog. Drop us a line: Cliff or Volker

This subject has been on and around our plates for some time. That said, it is on the road map now and we are seriously investigating and considering it for a future release.

So, as I do, I have looked up the "what", "how" and "when" of digital signatures...to allow all of us to better understand the basic principles of this *thing*.

"In essence, a digital signature is a way to ensure that an electronic document (e-mail, spreadsheet, text file, etc.) is authentic or genuine. Authentic means that one knows who created the document and one knows that it has not been altered in any way since that person created it.

Digital signatures rely on certain types of encryption to ensure authentication. Encryption is the process of taking all the data that one computer is sending to another and encoding it into a form that only the other computer will be able to decode. Authentication is the process of verifying that information is coming from a trusted source. These two processes work hand in hand for digital signatures.

There are several ways to authenticate a person or information on a computer:

Password

Checksum

CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check)

Private key encryption

Public key encryption

Digital certificates

The Digital Signature Standard (DSS) is based on a type of public key encryption method that uses the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA). The format for digital signatures that has been endorsed by the US government is DSS. The DSA algorithm consists of a private key that only the originator of the document (signer) knows and a public key."

Meanwhile, some customers have shown some real originality dealing with the issue. Take the City of Lisbon, Portugal, where Henrique Saias has faced the problem head on and currently implemented a work around.

For now, they rely on a signed declaration, which states that the DWF file is a digital version of the legally verified and signed paper version they are still to receive.

"A document management software is used in the process to ensure that digital documents cannot be changed.

The application receives the DWF files, manages its versions and enforces a strict access rules. The application extracts vector data when the DWF files are uploaded at first. As part of the process, users are only granted rights to upload data at this point. Following that, data is compressed and stored in a database. From here on, the DWF file enters the approval process and every time a users access a specific DWF file, vector data is compared with the previously stored in the database.

For added security, XML data is also stored for any markups that might be created as part of the review process and saved in the same database. Once all data has been saved, DWF files are deleted and not saved. Should the same DWF be accessed again going forward, users do have the option to display markups stored earlier in the process."

Note: This is a custom application, developed to handle this particular process.

April 02, 2008

The enclosed table shows new features introduced during the last three and the current 2009 release cycle. My initial thoughts were that I should include even older versions but I dropped the idea along the way.

Please let me know should you be interested to learn what features we introduced prior to those stated in the document.

I have been asked for sometime now to produce a document like this and I am glad that I finally got round doing it.